Linux

That's not been my experience.

Granted, printers suuuuuck. But I was legit surprised when both the printing and scanning functions in Linux were hands down better than windows.

Is printing cumbersome and difficult on Linux? Yes, it can be. Is it better than Windows? Also yes.

Any problem I've ever had printing is almost exclusively a problem with the printer, it's usually yellow or cyan. Doesn't matter the document is black&white.

I’m not sure on this one, but it may depend on the printer. Printing on Linux for me has been the easiest process ever. Windows fights me at every corner, but Linux sees my network printers and they just work out of the box. (I’ve only used Brother printers for the last 20 years)

It used to back in the day, especially if you tried using shitty windows usb inkjets.

Nowadays basically all printers are network printers (they are, aren't they?) plus we have cups which is the same thing macos uses (so manufacturers actually care).

Printing has basically everywhere been annoying. You need(-ed) specific drivers or even apps to make it work and if you have that set up it still can be annoying. And because most of these drivers/apps don’t support Linux printing relied on reverse engineered drivers. Then CUPS came around which made things better. And when apple adopted CUPS for Mac suddenly everyone wanted to support.

If you are really interested check out this episode of destination Linux where it’s discussed in detail.

IDK, my housemates printer required literally 0 setup to work with my linux VM and I've never had an issue. When I print from windows it's a pain in the butt sometimes.

I only print docs and pictures. But in my opinion printing on Linux is largely better than Windows. It just works most of the time. And if there is an issue the solution is generally restarting the job.

It was terrible in the 90's. Since CUPS became standard around 2000 it's significantly easier.

This has been my experience also. My Brother printer/scanner works great with linux.

Printing is a bitch no matter the platform and its usually the producers of the printers that fail. Everyone wants to make their own standard or interpret any standard in their own way. Duplex settings? Sometimes easy to find, and sometimes called something else and put in a weird spot of the interface.

Basic printing to usb is fine on Linux. My pi zero hooked to a brother laser has been providing wifi printing for me for the last 5 years. Installed cups and connected the usb and it was rocking

I have a HP printer and printing is never a smooth process. No idea why, but it takes me 5/10 minutes each time

HP Laser 107w, driverless, over LAN.

I just Ctrl+P from any software and it prints.

It also prints programmatically (for e.g. folk.computer ) thanks to IPP.

I didn't have to "think about printing" since I have that setup so I don't know where you get that sentiment.

I think that used to be the case more than it is now. Linux now uses the same printing system (CUPS) as macOS, and macOS printing has to work or Apple's customers would be unsatisfied.

Printing on Linux has been seamless for me so far, unlike windows and macos

I noticed this too. In theprimeagens recent video on cups problem they kept making jokes about printing on Unix. I think I must be lucky or something cause so far every printer I have setup on Linux has been easier then having to download all the bloatware to make them work on windows. But I have only done about 6 printers so far on Linux.

It is way easier than anything else.

I had a Samsung colour laser printer, they provided driver for linux, I installed them, everything works, full support for settings etc

As long as your printer is supported, it's not difficult. The problem is that if you need advanced options, like artists need usually, the options aren't there.

The Canon Pixma has always problematic for me with driver issues.

Anecdotally Windows is the only platform I've used where printing (and scanning) didn't tend to "just work". The only issue I've had printing under Linux was with a second hand printer my dad got that we couldn't get to print from any computer. (shrug)

Drivers.

It’s fine now, but getting CUPS installed, configured, and getting proper drivers for your printer used to be incredibly difficult, especially if you were new to Linux and didn’t know how to do any of that stuff.

Dunno, I own the cheapest Ink Jet HP sells and setup is much faster on Linux than via their drivers on Windows.
Gnome Scanner also wipes the floor with any scanning application from HP/MSFT

It depends... 3d printing works fine :D

That's not my experience. Bought a new Brother MFC the other day. Hooked it up to the Wifi. All Linux machines in the house can automatically print and scan without any additional setup needed.

I'm hooked on my brother with a wifi print server now. All three major OS in our house, I just make sure the printer stays updated. Not sure how to print photos, though.

I haven't used a new printer or an inkjet in a number of years now, but using my 18yo HP laserjet is a matter of plugging it in and checking it's status under the main distro settings menu. That was also on par with the windows process iirc.

I do remember 20 years ago when I had to sideload pcmcia wifi drivers, though.

You're printin experience within Linix is going to entirely depend on which printer you have. Some work out of the box immediately others take hours to get working and digging through forums looking for drivers.

I have a Postscript 3 compatible ipp network color laser printer for about 15 years now and it works without any issues with Linux, way better then it does from Windows. So I never understood way they say that printing is cumbersome with Linux.

my experience is that through network, it's just flawless. I turned on my printer and sure there it was. (though this feature just became a huge issue recently :P)

thats just cuz printers generally suck

My migration to Linux Mint coincided with getting a Brother Laser printer (DCP-L3520CDW) and I've had zero issues with text, photos or scanning. I just fired up the Brother and Mint said "oh, you've got a printer, wanna use it?"

For basic document printing it's been great but for doing fancy print jobs it's tough on any os depending on the printer and support. My wife makes stickers and notebooks and got a fancy Epson printer and going windows Mac and Linux it was a pain. She finally got it down on her windows machine.

Even the documentation was terrible. It told her for duplex prints she would have to manually move the paper but once she figured it out it was all automatic. Youtube guides were even worse since they said it wasn't even possible on that model

my printer spits out page upon page of random characters and mess when I try to print from my desktop, gave up and use my phone now

My brother needed the driver installed in debian on Qubes but has been flawless beyond that. When I was still running arch it just worked out of the box